They say kisses sweeter than wine but most wine – particularly good red wine – let’s say from Burgundy – and now I am thinking specifically of Domaine de La Romanee-Conti in Vosne whose wines often more than five hundred dollars a bottle and there is a very small supply available of these wines every year in spite of the exorbitant price – is not at all sweet, in fact, you might even call it earthy, loamy, with hints of moss and black tea and tobacco leaf, or as the French might succinctly suggest, of redolent terroir, quite delicious, and dry.

I used to write a stories about a little boy named Chopin, but it was so hard to do. Even though this Chopin couldn’t play music and loved baseball and skipped school and wore little blue jeans, every time I would write a story about him, anyone who read it would read my Chopin would start to hum Chopin things and stop reading about my Chopin.

People told me: the only thing you can do if you want to write a story about a little boy named Chopin is to wait until no one who remembers Chopin is still alive. Or go to a faraway place filled with ice and forests. Or simply write a story about a little boy named Chopin, who loves the piano and plays it very well, coughs once, and then dies.

Laurie would like to go to Mars.But Laurie would also like to understand things like birds in her backyard. Laurie will someday go to Mars, when people can say “Let’s go to Mars.” And with her Laurie will bring birds when they say “Mars is now safe for us and for birds.”When Laurie thinks about it, she realizes that birds are in outer space, just like Mars.Not like Earth.No wait.On second thought, I would like a lemonade.

Saturday, May 28, 2016

I told her all about France and she thought Franz.And she wanted to meet this Franzwith his beautiful cafés and spirited roundelays and cobbled streets and handsome bookstoresand cheap beer and paintly straw brooms andfashionable boulevards at dawn until I told herI really meant France.

But she went to France anyway, and loved itwith all her heart. After much searching,and staring, she finally did meet Franz,and he was everything she dreamed he would be –for truly, Franz was Franz.

If a skyscraper lies down flat, it would be the funnest thingto play hopscotch on, said a bluebird but a bluebird isnot only too small and of twiney leg to hopscotch, but fliesabout rather than walks upon skyscrapers as is his want.

But were a man to say it, ohmy – a man is almost proportional to the task –but again, not quite. He would have to be a giantamong men – consider Abraham Lincoln who wasa giant among men for he was so tall

Or Paul Bunyan differently, for he was invented tall, or bestof all, Thomas Edison, for he could invent something to make him taller – a giant among men – but his inventions, well really, they were stolen,mostly.

When I was younger, I went out to the mailbox every day. Sometimes I went out twice, in case the mailman, who was elderly and kindly, had forgotten to give me something, and had returned in order to assure that I received it, although this never happened, even though he was somewhat older and kindly and even though I know he would have done this.

Now I go out twice a week: Mondays and Fridays. Or: Tuesdays and Thursdays. Sometimes: just Saturday. And then Monday. I do not know who the mailman is. I never talk to people. I stay inside, and then, on certain days, go out to the mailbox and smell the air.

When I do this, the box is filled with bundles and magazines and letters and things but no actual letters. It feels like Christmas, without the letters. Even when it is hot and sunny, I think: Christmas. If it is raining, I don’t go out, and think what a terrible Christmas it is, and miss my bundles.

Benjamin Franklin once asked: “What sort of bundles?” Usually books. This week I found THOSE WITHOUT SHADOWS. Here’s what I knew about this book: nothing. I liked its title.It seemed like it could be a romance or a mystery thriller or perhaps some sort of book about ghosts or a BIble.

There were two others: one for frugal American housewives. It has recipes for election cake, caraway cake, tea cake, dough-nuts (spelled that way), cup cakes (spelled that way) and advice that is very smart about how it is important to do certain things, like administer New England rum to wounds, and how to properly care for a raspberry shrub.

The final book is completely in Spanish. It’s beautiful and it was written during World War II. It contains dogs without equal, rare and distinguished gentlemen, two ancient ladies, and Joan of Arc who says: “They hoped to win with their weapons?” only in Spanish, as the flames licked her feet.

It has often been said that the mailbox is the most beautiful thing in the world. I think it is. All my loved ones, gone these many years, would say the same. Yes, they would say, yes.

Saturday, May 14, 2016

If your pool is the shape of a moon, and the sky is clear and the moon is out and full and in just the right place, you will have a moon in your backyard that you can jump into. A few minutes later, the devil will have taken the moon away, and your moon will be filled with stars.

I’ve met two people in my life that liked artichokes. My sister, and this waiter at the Oak Leaf Restaurant who used to eat gobs of them in the afternoon after school when he was a child growing up in Ohio and would say they were better than chocolate at least to me they are and who also forgot to bring the Malescot St. Exupery Margaux 2012 with our entrées until we were almost finished so we drank all the water instead which was refreshing and made us regret ordering a bottle of wine but we were still happy when it arrived and after that he brought us the baguettes with soft butter a crunchy crust had the baguettes but by then it was too late to go to the movie about the Nazi occupation of the Louvre in 1941 or so and so we just drank our wine and ate our crunchy baguettes.

Thursday, May 12, 2016

They are feeding LSD to the bison of Montana. This is not good. The bison are interested in LSD but it is not good for them at all. The owners of the bison are understandably furious about this. Bison cannot do the things that bison should do – like romp and mount – when they are hallucinating. What can they do about these acid eating bison? What will transpire with the bison population if the culprits do not desist? What will the world feel like when you can no longer say “Out there in the prairie – I think I spotted some bison” when the fields seem to glow in the pale afternoon light?It is worth keeping in mind that the bison eat the LSDthe first time out of politeness. The second time, out of desire.

A collection of flowers left on a grave in tissue paperlooks like a cigarette if the flowers are not fancylike red carnations but if they are fancy like red rosesthey don’t look like a cigarette and still, people smokeand give other people roses and love it’s a sunny day againat the graveyard

They say that something can either be unique or not unique but something cannot be kind of unique but I don’t think that’s true. There are a million things that I could list for you that are kind of unique, although really they are unique until you find something that is kind of like them, at which point they became kind of. Even unique things are not unique we know for sure that they are, and when do we know that? Never. So we must accept the fact that unique things might be unique or might not be unique, and common things might be unique or no, wait a minute, common things are unique at all.

I have a large bowl of M & Ms on my coffee table and the sun is shining down on them and they are all so beautiful.